Do dogs had consciousness and they really feel pain?
Animal Psychology:
The Animal psychology in the psychtronics gives The answers to the questions "Do dogs had consciousness and they really fell pain?" – yes is so obvious it seems ridiculous even to ask them given what we know about animal cognition and sentience.
Nonetheless, they do arise and not only in philosophical circles where wide-ranging discussions often take place but also among a very few skeptical researchers. New York University philosopher Dale Jamieson and I wrote about the idea of nonconscious pain 20 years ago and refuted Peter Carruthers' assumption that "in the case of brutes: since their pains are nonconscious (as are all their mental states), they ought not to be allowed to get in the way of any morally-serious objective." Just a few weeks ago I was told that these sorts of discussions are still going on.
Animal Psychology:
The Animal psychology in the psychtronics gives The answers to the questions "Do dogs had consciousness and they really fell pain?" – yes is so obvious it seems ridiculous even to ask them given what we know about animal cognition and sentience.
Nonetheless, they do arise and not only in philosophical circles where wide-ranging discussions often take place but also among a very few skeptical researchers. New York University philosopher Dale Jamieson and I wrote about the idea of nonconscious pain 20 years ago and refuted Peter Carruthers' assumption that "in the case of brutes: since their pains are nonconscious (as are all their mental states), they ought not to be allowed to get in the way of any morally-serious objective." Just a few weeks ago I was told that these sorts of discussions are still going on.
Empirical
researchers also get into the fray.
Following up on what I call Dawkins' Dangerous Idea (see also), Marian Dawkins
wrote, " ... from a scientific view, we understand so little about animal
consciousness (and indeed our own consciousness) that to make the claim that we
do understand it, and that we now know which animals experience emotions, may
not be the best way to make the case for animal welfare." Indeed, it's a
small leap to claim that we also should question whether human animals
experience emotions.
That dogs
and other animals (including fish, see also) really do feel pain and really are
conscious beings is assumed in veterinary
medicine, human-oriented biomedical research, the establishment of guidelines
for such research, research on animal cognition, emotions, and moral
sentiments, and animal training. It's not a matter of if these traits have
evolved and are shared by other animals, but why.
Two quotations
from a recent essay about personhood
in dolphins support what I just wrote above and what the majority of
researchers believe based on available empirical:
Despite not
being able to locate the seat of consciousness in the animal brain—something
true for humans as well—most scientists no longer ask whether animals have
inner experiences. Some degree of sentience is considered self-evident. For
neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, one of the world’s leading experts on the neural
origins of mind and emotion, “the denial of consciousness in animals is as
improbable as the pre-scientific anthropocentric
view that the sun revolves around the Earth.”
In a sense
the human-to-animal mind question may simply be an exaggerated version of the
human-to-human mind question: We can never entirely know another person’s
experience—all the more so if that person was raised in a different culture—but
there are vast areas of overlap that can, with science and empathy and imagination, be expanded.
At a few
recent meetings after I spoke about animal consciousness, self-awareness, and
emotions we had wide-ranging discussions about whether animals know who they
are and is their level of self-awareness the same as ours. I've discussed these
topics elsewhere (see also) and suggested that it really doesn't matter if
their consciousness is like ours and that while other animals may or may not
know who they are and may or may not have a sense of what I call I-ness, they
do have a sense of body-ness and mine-ness. Much more research on the question
of I-ness is needed because we really don't know much especially for wild
animals. It's time to get out of the armchair and into the field. Speculation
doesn't substitute for careful
studies of behaviour.
I concluded
my earlier article as such: In my book, Minding animals: Awareness, Emotions,
and Heart and elsewhere I argued that a sense of body-ness is necessary and
sufficient for most animals to engage in social activities that are needed in
the social milieus in which they live. But, while a sense of body-ness is
necessary for humans to get along in many of the situations they encounter,
it's often not sufficient for them to function as they need to. A human
typically knows who he or she is, say by name, and knows that "this body"
is his, Marc's, or him, Marc.
There's a sense of "I-ness" that's an extension of
"body-ness" or "mine-ness." So, my take on animal selves
means that David Graybeard [a
chimpanzee who Jane Goodall studied for years and was the first chimpanzee
observed using a tool] and Jethro [my companion dog with whom I shared my home
for years] knew they weren't one of their buddies. Many animals know such facts
as "this is my tail," "this is my territory," "this is
my bone or my piece of elk," "this is my mate," and "this
is my urine." Their sense of "mine-ness" or
"body-ness" is their sense of "self."
At many gatherings discussions of animal pain
and animal emotions often follow talk about animal consciousness. And, when I
ask if people believe that dogs, for example, feel pain, as far as I can see
every head goes up.
But then someone often asks, "Do they know they are in pain?"
But then someone often asks, "Do they know they are in pain?"
Once again,
I'm happy to have my philosopher colleagues debate the notion of nonconscious
pain (and other experiences) and whether an animal knows that she/he is in
pain, but from a practical point of view that underlies so much of what we do
to make sure animals don't suffer we all assume that they do feel pain. So,
while there are "academic" questions about animal self-awareness,
there also are some very important practical reasons to learn about animal
selves. Achieving reliable answers to questions about animal selves is very
important because they're often used to defend the sorts of treatment to which
individuals can be ethically subjected. However, even if an animal doesn't know
"who" she is, this doesn't mean she can't feel that something painful
is happening to her body. Self-awareness may not be a reliable test for an
objective assessment of well-being.
So, when,
for example, my companion dog Jethro limped
over to me after tripping on a rock, squealing and holding his left front leg
in the air and asking for me to take care of him, it really didn't matter if he
had a deep sense of self. He really felt the pain, I'd venture to say his pain,
and when I took him to the veterinarian she confirmed that he had a badly torn
muscle and was indeed in pain. Some pain-killers and rest really did the trick,
the same as they would for a human animal.
Whether or
not nonhuman pain or consciousness is just like ours isn't the important issue.
Speciesists often use taxonomic or behavioural (cognitive, emotional) closeness
to humans, similar appearance, or the possession of various cognitive
capacities displayed by normal adult humans to draw a line that separates
humans from other animals. The Oxford English Dictionary defines speciesism as "discrimination
against or exploitation of certain animal species by human beings, based on an
assumption of mankind’s superiority."
In his
review of the recent documentary called "Speciesism: The Movie" by Mark
Devries, Bruce Friedrich, who works for Farm Sanctuary, offers two powerful
quotations that are worth noting, each coming from a woman who has had vastly
different experiences with other animals. In the first, renowned primatologist
and conservationist Jane Goodall notes, "farm animals feel pleasure and
sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far
more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined . . . they are individuals in
their own right."
The second
quotation comes from Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation. Grandin, who
works to improve animal welfare at slaughterhouses writes, "When it comes
to the basics of life . . . [other] animals feel the same way we do." Friedrich notes that Grandin goes on to
explain that both humans and other animals share both the exact same core
emotions ("rage, prey chase drive, fear, and
curiosity/interest/anticipation") and the same "four basic social
emotions: sexual attraction and lust, separation distress, social attachment,
and the happy emotions of play and roughhousing.
"While Dr. Grandin and I do have our differences, I'm so pleased to see these words from her and of course she does what she does because of what we know about animal pain, consciousness, and emotions from solid scientific research.
"While Dr. Grandin and I do have our differences, I'm so pleased to see these words from her and of course she does what she does because of what we know about animal pain, consciousness, and emotions from solid scientific research.
Continued
discussions about whether nonhuman animals really feel pain or really are
conscious may be interesting to pursue in the ivory tower but we know enough right
now to claim they do indeed really feel pain and really are conscious and
really do experience a wide range of emotions. From a practical point of view
these questions are central to some of my own interests including ways to
rewild our hearts and to stop the process of dehumanization (see also).
It's also bad biology and goes against the basic tenets of Darwinian ideas about evolutionary continuity to rob animals of these traits and to claim human exceptionalism. As I wrote above, it's not a matter of if these traits have evolved and are shared by other animals, but why.
It's also bad biology and goes against the basic tenets of Darwinian ideas about evolutionary continuity to rob animals of these traits and to claim human exceptionalism. As I wrote above, it's not a matter of if these traits have evolved and are shared by other animals, but why.
Clearly,
there's a lot at stake for other animals and we should never let them suffer
because of our failure to appreciate who they are based on solid scientific
evidence. It's really a no-brainer.
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